


Sky Blue

by henrywinter (bakkhant)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Development, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Resentment, that quad salchow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 16:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13550889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakkhant/pseuds/henrywinter
Summary: At first, Otabek thinks JJ’s trying to psych him out.To begin with, Otabek (who's fought tooth and nail to be where he is) has a difficult time in Canada. JJ (an entitled prick, he thinks), arguably, helps.





	Sky Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prillalar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prillalar/gifts).



> I wrote this way back in July last year, but didn't quite get round to doing a lot of things (posting it is just one of them, oops). 
> 
> Still for Hal, who wrote such delightful JJBek things; do check them out.

At first, Otabek thinks JJ’s trying to psych him out. It’s been two months since he arrived in Canada, and while he _is_ staying at his house on top of sharing a rink, JJ’s behaviour still goes far beyond hospitality. 

It’d started with JJ staggering their practice times so that he always had a few minutes’ break time to blatantly scrutinise Otabek’s performance; Otabek resolutely ignores him, focusses instead on wobbling through the quad Salchow he still can’t pull off. After that, he’d adopted the habit of swinging by Otabek’s room every evening, throwing himself onto the bed as soon as he’s let in, then chattering too fast for comprehension. 

It usually takes at least an hour of one-sided conversation before he goes, taking all his noise and brash energy with him. Only then can Otabek relax; usually, he spends the rest of his free time drudging through his textbooks. If he can, he Skypes his parents, but more often, he has to sleep earlier than they wake, and he’s left with Shakespeare and calculus for company. 

The days pass in much the same way: breakfast with JJ’s family; train in intervals throughout the day; study in the evenings, or lie back, appreciate the hard-won peace. His skating improves rapidly, as does his English - both are unavoidable, when his coaches are JJ’s parents, and JJ’s parents talk as much as their son. 

Amidst all this, Otabek’s slower to realise that he might’ve been wrong about JJ. 

The thing is - and Otabek knows he’s being unfair - JJ isn’t easy to like. Every time JJ’s parents keep up their relentless encouragement but frown a bit when he fumbles something JJ can already do flawlessly on the ice, every time JJ brings home the girl he’s been seeing more and more of, and babbles on and on to her like loud confidence is his mother tongue - Otabek can’t help resenting him a little.

The thing is, Otabek’s parents have had to claw every last tenge of funding from the NSF for him, and it still isn’t nearly enough to cover his time in Russia, America, Canada. They haven’t told him this, of course, just like he hasn’t told them how he can spend a whole day without talking to anyone beyond ‘yes’ and ‘thank you’, how he still can’t land his quad. And he might’ve discovered soon enough that JJ’s harmless, and not actually trying to intimidate, push around, sabotage him, but it’s hard to forgive his easy grins, the effortless way he cuts over home ice.

Sometimes those grins take longer to appear than they should; sometimes, Otabek catches a grimace as JJ straightens up from a fall that has nothing to do with the pain. He feels, too distantly to really matter, that he should be sympathetic. Instead, he has to fight to stop his lip curling - so JJ was born to two skating champions, with two wide-eyed younger siblings waiting expectantly for him to fill their shoes. So _what._

But then, JJ saunters casually up to him in the changing room one afternoon, after Otabek had spent hours pushing himself past his limit trying - unsuccessfully, again - to land the Salchow. JJ’s parents might have given up on him, suggesting that he direct his focus elsewhere, but he refuses to let this go. He looks up at JJ as he approaches, hips sore and muscles burning like anger, and fights hard to keep the glare from his face. 

“Hey,” JJ says brightly. If he sees how stiffly Otabek’s sitting, he doesn’t let it show. “You still suck at the quad Salchow, right?”

“Hey,” he says again when Otabek doesn’t answer, in exactly the same sunny tone. “Don’t be mad. I’ll teach it to you, if you like.”

He’s smiling like they’re friends, like they do this for each other all the time. Like Otabek doesn’t mostly tune him out when he flops down onto his bed and prattles about his day, funny things that happened, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella.

He’s smiling like he wants to be friends. When Otabek finally signals his agreement with a nod, JJ slaps the wall hard enough to make him nearly jump off the bench, and _beams_ like it’s a gift.

**Author's Note:**

> I would Adore feedback x


End file.
